Chapter 1 AL Does Your Hardware Measure Up? GH TE D MA TE RI Your boss or customer will start the conversation with one question when you propose to upgrade the desktop infrastructure to Windows 7: How much will it cost? Licensing might come into the equation and it may not. That’s usually a pretty simple calculation.
| Chapter 1 Does Your Hardware Measure Up? •u Windows 7 Ultimate •u Windows 7 Enterprise We won’t go into detail on the first three; the Starter edition is available via original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) only and is used mainly for netbook systems, and Home Basic and Home Premium editions are focused on the end consumer market. This leaves us with the Professional, Ultimate, and Enterprise editions.
Windows 7 Hardware Requirements Transferring a small file over that connection will take much longer than it would have with a local file server. BranchCache provides a way to cache centrally located web or file server content in the branch office, either using desktops (in a peer-to-peer network) or a Windows Server 2008 R2 server. Client machines will retrieve files from the cache rather than from the remote share if they are unchanged.
| Chapter 1 Does Your Hardware Measure Up? hardware. Windows 7 has much higher hardware requirements than Windows XP. You will have to know the requirements of Windows 7 so that you can identify the desktops and laptops that must be either upgraded or replaced. Those organizations that bought PCs recently would have been purchasing machines that were designed for Windows Vista but were downgraded to Windows XP. We have some very good news for you; these machines will be probably fine for Windows 7.
Windows 7 Hardware Requirements Table 1.1 shows the maximum amount of memory that is supported by each Windows 7 edition. Table 1.1: Maximum memory supported by Windows 7 Edition 32-bit limit 64-bit limit Enterprise 4 GB 192 GB Ultimate 4 GB 192 GB Professional 4 GB 192 GB Home Premium 4 GB 16 GB Home Basic 4 GB 8 GB Starter 2 GB 2 GB The information in Table 1.
| Chapter 1 Does Your Hardware Measure Up? You now know the requirements of Windows 7. The challenge is to use this information to identify what you need to do with your existing computers so that you can deploy the new desktop operating system. This is where you may start to use the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit.
Using the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit •u Windows Server 2008 •u Windows Vista Ultimate, Enterprise, or Business Edition •u Windows Server 2003 R2 •u Windows Server 2003 with Service Pack 1 or later •u Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 2 or later The following additional software components must be installed before you install MAP: •u .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 (3.5.30729.01) •u Windows Installer 4.
| Chapter 1 Does Your Hardware Measure Up? without using a domain admin user—and without running around to every computer to set up a user with administrative rights. The process will start with some basic Group Policy engineering. You should identify a location to link a new Group Policy Object (or edit an existing one). This organizational unit (OU) will contain all the computers that will inherit and apply the new setting (for a new local administrative user).
Using the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit Careful Approach to New Group Policy Objects You should always limit the scope of a new policy to a set of test machines. This will allow you to check your new policy without doing any harm to production systems. Ideally you will limit the number of GPOs in a domain. However, some administrators will choose to create a new GPO for new policy settings that are created.
| Chapter 1 Does Your Hardware Measure Up? Figure 1.3 The Add Group dialog box A new dialog box opens, allowing you to control the membership of the MAPGroup security group. This policy setting, when applied or refreshed, will add the group to the group that we’ll specify in a moment. You can specify which groups MAPGroup will be made a member of by clicking the Add button beside This Group Is A Member Of.
Using the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit Remote Registry Service This service is used by MAP to identify which roles are installed and to gather performance information. Windows Management Instrumentation Service The WMI service must be enabled and running. Local Administrator Credentials MAP uses WMI to remotely access each computer. This will use the previously configured administrator credentials to get administrative access to each machine. Figure 1.
| Chapter 1 Does Your Hardware Measure Up? Model For Local Accounts to use the Classic: Local Users Authenticate As Themselves setting, as shown in Figure 1.6. Figure 1.6 Network Access Model for Local User Accounts You will need to start working on the firewall next. Navigate to Computer Configuration Policies Administrative Templates Network Network Connections Windows Firewall Domain Profile. You will enable Windows Firewall: Allow Inbound Remote Administration Exception.
Using the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit | Figure 1.7 Allow Inbound Remote Administration Exception Figure 1.8 Configuring the Remote Registry Service Policy It is possible that you will have computers to assess that are members of workgroups. The firewall exemptions and access configurations will have to be set up using manual configuration or by using a script.
| Chapter 1 Does Your Hardware Measure Up? Installing MAP on the Server Install the operating system and prerequisites for MAP on the machine that you will install MAP on. You can use the free SQL Server Express Edition on that machine. By default, the Express Edition is downloaded and installed by the MAP installer. Alternatively, you can use a purchased version of SQL Server. You can do so by installing a SQL instance called MAPS on the server before starting the MAP installer.
Using the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit | The SQL Server Express screen (Figure 1.10) lets you configure how SQL Server Express will be installed. The default option is to allow the wizard to download and install the files. The second option, Install From Previously Downloaded Installation Files, enables you to use a copy of the setup files for SQL Server Express that you might have previously downloaded for other projects.
| Chapter 1 Does Your Hardware Measure Up? Figure 1.12 MAP reference material The Surveys wunderbar is strangely named. It provides you with links to more reference material. There is a link in MAP to take you to a website called IPD Assessment Guide And Scenario Selection Tool. The content included will help you choose the correct desktop solution or solutions for your organization. The Software Usage Tracker wunderbar takes you to a feature that was introduced in MAP.
Using the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit | You can expand each of the items in the navigation pane on the left to see the many ways you can use MAP.
| Chapter 1 Does Your Hardware Measure Up? Figure 1.15 The Inventory Scenarios screen Windows-Based Computers is selected by default. This is the option that you will use for a Windows 7 readiness assessment. Click the Next button to continue to the next screen. Getting Some Help Microsoft got a lot of criticism about its documentation for the Windows Vista deployment technologies. Redmond listened and a lot of very positive changes were made.
Using the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit | Use System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) System Center Configuration Manager (also known as SCCM or ConfigMgr) is Microsoft’s enterprise deployment and management solution. We will look at it more in Chapter 12, “Zero Touch Installations,” where you will learn to push out a Windows 7 image to SCCM-managed computers without touching them.
| Chapter 1 Does Your Hardware Measure Up? The Active Directory Credentials screen (Figure 1.17) asks you to enter the credentials that will be used by MAP to connect to Active Directory and to identify the computer account objects that will be assessed. This account must be a domain member with read permissions for the required OUs. Fill in the appropriate information, then click Next. Figure 1.17 Active Directory discovery credentials The Active Directory Options screen (Figure 1.
Using the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit | In this example, we are going to assess all computers in deploy.com Deploy Computers. Choose the Find Computers In The Specified Domains, Containers, And Organization Units radio button, and click Next. You may be wondering when you’ll get to use that domain-based user account that you spent so much time on to grant it local administrative rights on your computers.
| Chapter 1 Does Your Hardware Measure Up? The All Computers Credentials screen is updated to show the entered credentials, as shown in Figure 1.21. Figure 1.21 Updated All Computers Credentials If you do enter more than one set of credentials in the All Computers Credentials screen, you will want to define the order in which they will be tried when MAP connects to computers using WMI. To control this ordering, in the Credentials Order screen (Figure 1.
Using the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit | The Summary screen lists the configuration of the discovery. You can proceed with the discovery if you are happy. Figure 1.23 shows the status of the running discovery. You can close this window and monitor the discovery progress in the bottom of the MAP console. Figure 1.23 Discovery status The Windows 7 Readiness view is updated with some initial Windows 7 Readiness Summary Results (see Figure 1.24 a bit later) when the discovery is completed.
| Chapter 1 Does Your Hardware Measure Up? Produce MAP Reports and Proposals The MAP database should now contain information about discovered computers and their specifications. You can start to use this data to identify machines that are suitable for Windows 7, those that need to be upgraded, and those that need to be replaced. The Windows 7 Readiness Summary Results (Figure 1.
Produce MAP Reports and Proposals | We should investigate why none of our machines have fallen into the Ready For Windows 7 category. We can do this by running a report based on the collected data and the assessment. Take the following steps: 1. Click on the Generate Report/Proposal link in the Actions pane to create a report. 2. A job status window appears, as shown in Figure 1.25. You can close this window and reopen it by clicking the job status button, which appears at the bottom of the MAP console.
| Chapter 1 Does Your Hardware Measure Up? Figure 1.27 Reason for not being Windows 7 ready 5. Take some time to look around this spreadsheet report. It will be the basis of your future work in the Windows 7 deployment project. There are a number of worksheets, which are detailed in Table 1.2. Table 1.2: The Excel report Worksheet name Description Summary This is a summary of the categorization of the discovered machines.
Produce MAP Reports and Proposals Table 1.2: | The Excel report (continued) Worksheet name Description DeviceDetails Details on every discovered device are listed here, including actions that need to be taken if the attached machine is upgraded to Windows 7. MinimumAfterUpgrades This worksheet lists the actions that must be taken to bring discovered computers up to a point where they meet the minimum requirements for Windows 7.
| Chapter 1 Does Your Hardware Measure Up? 7. Select the Use Custom Settings option and modify the selections and entered hardware sizes to meet your requirements (Figure 1.29). Notice that the If DVD-ROM Is Not Found, Flag Machine As Not Ready option has been deselected. This should change the assessment categorization of our five machines. Figure 1.
Produce MAP Reports and Proposals 9. When you have discovered and assessed as many machines as you can in the organization and you have configured the assessment properties appropriately, rerun the Generate Report/Proposal job to create the documents based on the latest information in the MAP database. 10. Return to the folder containing your MAP reports and proposals. Check out the Word document that was mentioned in step 3 (Figure 1.31).
| Chapter 1 Does Your Hardware Measure Up? You could perform a single discovery of all machines to create a single MAP database. You would then set the assessment properties and generate reports for each of the user categories in the organization. You would have to edit each report to filter out each of the unwanted machines. The result will be that you have three reports, with each one containing an assessment for each of the machine groups (managers, IT consultants, and developers).
The Bottom Line | Plan for and use the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit. MAP can be installed and used in a number of ways, depending on the organization and the project. Master It You are working as a senior engineer in a multinational organization. You have been tasked with performing an assessment of all desktop and laptop computers in the organization for a deployment of Windows 7. The project manager has told you that you must not impact the WAN connections in any way.
